Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
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Tuesday, Mar. 02, 2004crazy crack pot conspiracies
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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
Also - help Save Our Consitution from the totally nonsensical and downright bigoted Federal Marriage Amendment, proposed by the Bush Administration. The proposed amendment states: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
The Center for an Informed America is...well, take a gander and form your own opinion. The guy who runs this site and whose opinions fill its pages is a character decidedly outside the mainstream; and I�m sure he would be proud to know I said so. Some of his opinions may be seen as being of the �crack-pot� ilk; he is undoubtedly accused of being a �Conspiracy Theorist� on a regular basis (and for and insightful piece on supposed �Conspiracy Theorists�, kindly see this article, written by Butler Shaffer, a teacher at the Southwestern University School of Law).
That said, while I don�t agree with all of what this man writes, I do agree with some of it. And let�s face it � an awful lot of so-called �crackpot conspiracy theories� throughout history have turned out to be true. And even when I don�t agree with this guy, he still makes me think and encourages me to research and look deeper at issues than what is being fed to me by mass media. And, you know�that�s rarely a bad thing.
So anyway, the guy sent out a newsletter this morning and I am excerpting two interesting sections of it, below. The first section, because I thought it was funny; the second, because I find it to be thought-provoking.
��Before continuing, I really need to address the issue of spam. Actually, what I would like to do is make an open appeal to the spammers of the world. But first, let me say that I am doing everything that I can to work with you guys. I really am. For example, I have learned to live with your constant insinuations that I am neither adequately equipped nor functional. I have also learned to live with the constant solicitations for Vicodin, Vioxx and Oxycontin. In fact, I now put those to good use: instead of just deleting them, which would be such a waste, I forward them all to Rush Limbaugh. So as you can see, I am doing everything possible to drum up business for you. And in return, I ask only one small favor: could we please leave my colon out of this?
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
�Has anyone heard anything about Saddam Hussein lately? I'm just curious, since he seemed to be the talk of the town just a couple of months ago, and now he seems to have dropped completely out of sight.
�I have to confess here that I was a little baffled by the capture. There is usually a certain logic to almost everything that Team Bush does, once one accepts the ugly reality of the world that we live in. But the capture of Saddam made no sense at all, since the primary accomplishment, beyond all the media spin, was depriving Washington of the last fraudulent justification for a continued American military presence in Iraq.
"The 'weapons of mass destruction' thing obviously hasn't worked out. And the 'Al Qaeda connection' never really panned out either. The only thing we had left was our noble goal of freeing the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam's cruel regime. So now that the King of the Evildoers has been captured, and both his sons have been killed, and all but ten of his 'Most Wanted' henchmen have been captured or killed (according to the Bush propaganda mill), isn't it about time for G.I. George to suit up, shove a sock down his pants, and unfurl that 'Mission Accomplished' banner once again? Isn't our work done?
�Several claims made repeatedly by the Bush administration were exposed by the capture as lies. We had been told, for example, that Saddam was leading the resistance movement. But the suggestion that an organized resistance movement was directed from a crude hole in the ground seems as preposterous as the notion that the September 11 attacks were planned in a cave in Afghanistan.
�We had been frequently reassured that Saddam could lead us to those elusive 'weapons of mass destruction.' But in a strange turn of events, the weapons inspection teams were pulled just after Hussein's capture, after not only failing in their mission to find actual 'weapons of mass destruction,' but after failing to even find any facilities capable of producing 'weapons of mass destruction.'
�We had also been told that many in Iraq were not yet willing to work with America in effecting 'regime change' because they feared that America was not going to 'finish the job,' and that Saddam would one day return. But it was immediately clear that the capture did nothing to lessen the resistance to the U.S. occupation.
�Saddam was obviously of far more propaganda value when he was still at large. And that is why I, and I'm sure many others, were left scratching our heads over the unexpected turn of events ... until, that is, I discovered that it was actually Kurds who had captured Saddam. And they had, obviously without running the idea past the White House, loudly trumpeted that fact to the international media, before any announcements were forthcoming from the Pentagon or the U.S. media.
�So Washington, as it turns out, really had no choice but to announce the capture of the not-so-elusive Hussein. Making the best of an unwelcome situation, the capture was spun as such a huge victory for Sir George that it all but insured him a second term in office. Saddam was then quickly shuffled out of the media spotlight.
�I did hear something recently about Hussein having cancer, but then that story seemed to quickly disappear as well. Wouldn't that be something if Hussein were to die of natural causes before being held accountable for his alleged war crimes? It's kind of a shame, when you think about it, that our intelligence people didn't pick up on the cancer before the war, because then they would have known that 'regime change' was coming even without the military assault. But I guess they blew that one, just like they blew the call on 'Weapons of Mass Destruction.'
�Oh, didn't you hear? It was all the CIA's fault. None of the fine and noble public servants in the Bush administration lied. They just drew erroneous conclusions based on the faulty intelligence they got from those chronic bumblers over there at Langley. Those guys are always screwing something up. In fact, this isn't the first time they have blown a call on Bush's watch. You may recall that we already played the Blame the CIA Game after that little 9-11 incident. You may also recall that it is kind of a win-win game for Washington. The White House wins by shifting blame elsewhere, exonerating all key members of Team Bush. But then in a strange twist, Langley wins as well, since no one is fired, or even reprimanded, and the agency is showered with billions of dollars in additional funding and granted expanded powers, ostensibly so that we don't have these types of screw-ups in the future.
�I'm feeling generous today, so I am going to offer to save a lot of time and taxpayer money by solving the great mystery of the Iraq intelligence failure: they lied. They lied repeatedly. And when I say "they," I don't mean just a few Team Bush players. I mean that the White House lied, the State Department lied, the Pentagon lied, the intelligence community lied, countless think tank 'analysts' lied, Representatives and Senators lied, 'Republicans' and 'Democrats' lied, and last but surely not least, the entire U.S. media establishment lied. And it was painfully obvious that they all were lying because they weren't even telling good lies, but rather recycled lies that had already been thoroughly discredited.
�As for Saddam, his fate remains unclear. We all know that we won't likely see him surface in a public trial. The only thing we can be sure of is that America has lost a great bogeyman -- a great personification of the 'War on Terror' and a great justification for both waging it and expanding it. Luckily, we still have Osama bin Laden.�
~~~
Bush Puts Giant Sequoias on the Chopping Block
Under the guise of forest fire prevention, the Bush Administration's Forest Service has proposed logging in California's Sequoia National Monument, home to some of the world's tallest and oldest trees, reaching ages of 3,200 years or more.[1] Also at risk are the Pacific fisher, the California spotted owl, and many other threatened species dependent on ancient forest habitat.[2]
Established by President Clinton in 2000, the Monument designation was the culmination of years of work by environmentalists. But in its draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for management of the Monument, the Forest Service chose the most environmentally destructive of six alternative management plans, the one calling for the most intensive logging.
Under the Forest Service's "preferred alternative," 80,000 acres would be opened for logging, including trees up to 30 inches in diameter, a size not permitted in most National Forests throughout the Sierra Nevada.[3] The Forest Service's proposal calls for 180 clearcuts, producing 10 million board feet a year.[4]
The Forest Service plan is based on the idea that if the ancient Sequoias aren't logged, they will be vulnerable to catastrophic fires (despite the fact that they have somehow managed to survive for thousands of years on their own). But the real motivation may lie in a sentence buried deep in the EIS, which says logging in the Monument "might make the difference between continued operation and closure of the one mill available to serve the Monument."
If fire prevention is actually the Forest Service's agenda, experts cite better ways to accomplish this, such as thinning the forest near homes and businesses, and increasing the number of prescribed burns.
Logging in the Monument will actually increase the likelihood of severe fires, since removal of the large trees reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy, and because highly flammable brush accumulates in open areas where logged trees once stood.[5]
In a final insult, the Forest Service plan will actually be subsidized by taxpayers, to the tune of $34 million. Much of that will go toward road building, even though there are already 900 miles of roads in the Monument. And nearly $14 million of taxpayer money will be spent for "mechanical thinning of conifer" -- otherwise known as logging. [6]
###
SOURCES:
[1] Presidential Proclamation establishing Sequoia National Monument, April 15, 2000.
[2] "Forest Service Bushwhacks Giant Sequoia National Monument," Sierra Club.
[3] "Forest Service Proposes to Log Sequoia National Monument," The Wilderness Society.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Action Alert, Sequoia ForestKeeper.
[6] Ibid.
~~~
Word of the Day for Tuesday March 2, 2004
qua KWAY; KWAH, preposition:
In the capacity or character of; as.
last / next
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